Sense of Elation
by UndercoverMoffat
Summary: The world is an ocean, and every single living soul is a wave crashing on the beach that is his mind. Every time they take a breath, the ocean churns and bubbles, and every time they feel, a hurricane brews overhead, lightning slicing across a silver-slicked sky; Mycroft Holmes is the iceberg that strikes him in the end.


Gregory Lestrade is eight years old when it first happens.

He thinks it probably occurred before that as well, but he doesn't have any memories of such - in fact, his earliest one has nothing do with it at all, but rather with falling off a swing set and his dad telling him to balk up and be a man. If he was going to be a fine detective like dear old Dad one day, then he couldn't let a scraped knee break him down.

The thing about all cops though is that they cheat. It's a saying that they pass around the tea tables, it's a saying that certainly made it to his mum's ears once or probably twice, he doesn't really know. All he is aware of is that memory of being eight years old, and that same dear old Dad comes in, wearing a copper's uniform. He stoops and kisses Gregory on the head which is really unlike him, and Greg was a little concerned. Dad was never like this - he wasn't the affectionate type - and he thought maybe he should sit down and accept it because was it really a bad thing?

But then it went through his mind, a zap like an electrical current dancing across wires, like static electricity floating between two people. He saw a young woman, pretty in the aesthetic sense of the word, eyes too dark, hiding things, lips too red. She wore a band around her left finger, silver instead of gold, and there was a grace about her; she moved like music. She tasted like peaches and peppermint and lies, and her name was Cynthia - Cynthia Nicole Tyler. A vague name, it meant nothing, or at least it would have if Gregory hadn't said, "Dad, who's Cynthia?"

The look that his Dad gave him - thesoundofglasshatteringandadoorslammingandawomans obbing - will be seared across his retinas for the reminder of his life.

~X~

The thing about it is, Gregory learned how to cope.

It wasn't easy, and it took time, not until after his younger self learned that not everybody is frightfully aware of these things did he get it under control. Or as much as he could muster - more accurately as much as he could filter out. The world is an ocean, even now, and every single living soul is a wave crashing on the beach that is his mind; every time they take a breath, the ocean churns and bubbles, and every time they feel, a hurricane brews overhead, lightning slicing across a silver-slicked sky. The words and emotions only become clear when Gregory allows them to, when he focuses and sharpens on it, when he pulls tight the rope of his sail and pulls out his binoculars. He's seen some wonders.

More often then not, he builds up a wall. It takes all night - he lays awake and takes each brick, carefully crafts it out with his bare hands until they're cracked and bleeding and builds a dome. Once it's constructed, can he venture out, can he accomplish his task. The only hindrance is that the wall prevents him from seeing things that are probably oh so very obvious - he could pull out his binoculars and solve the case, but he doesn't. He doesn't.

~X~

For a long while, Gregory thinks Sherlock Holmes is the same as him. That he too is standing in the middle of an ocean, but after a while, Greg learns it's quite the contrary; Sherlock /is/ the ocean. Sherlock is the ocean that churns and crashes and cries, but it's in an undercurrent sort of way - he's a riptide, a riptide that pulls everyone under. Gregory only ventures into Sherlock's mind on occasion - it's too much, it's all too much. It's broad and expansive, and different. Whereas most people are images and flashes, words and tastes, like flavours exploding across his tongue, Sherlock's mind is a palace. It is built of marble walls and coloured windows, of shelves carefully labeled and marked with information. That's how he does it, Lestrade discovers.

When he first meets him, Sherlock's mind palace is hindered. The glass rooms are blown out, the shelves are knocked over - it's the cocaine. It takes Sherlock a long while to fix that.

It doesn't even become complete, not really, not until John enters the picture. John Watson is the wallpaper on Sherlock's walls. John covers all the blank spaces in a way that Sherlock didn't even know was empty; Lestrade did, but he never commented. Gregory envies him for that, but he'd never say it. Never.

John's mind is different, it's a fireplace; it's warm, it smells of gingerbread and hugs. It reminds Greg of his mother, before the Bad Days. John Watson's mind is a safe place to go; not because it's empty but because it's full, it's so full of all this emotion, and Greg doesn't think John realises it. John Watson is one of those few people - Greg's only met three, but he likes to think there's more out there - who is a streak of sunlight through the storm clouds.

Sherlock Holmes and John Watson are like two puzzle pieces, and Lestrade thinks that if there such a thing as soul mates, they would be it.

~X~

Mycroft Holmes is different.

Mycroft Holmes is hard to read; Gregory never tries. Mycroft Holmes is a relief. He's a patch of coral, he's life support pulling Gregory from drowning. Mycroft Holmes is all sharp edges, all broken pieces, and carefully guarded secrets. Mycroft Holmes is beautiful.

In the few reprieves where Gregory really looks at Mycroft, he sees things that he likes to think nobody else can. He sees that Mycroft's only goal in life to protect his brother; it's what he was raised to do, it's what he was meant to do. He sees that Mycroft hates John Watson for doing his job better than he could; he loves John Watson for that same reason. Mycroft Holmes is all contradictions, and if Gregory could, he'd sit there and take the bastard apart, piece by piece. Tear down the steel wall that's so different yet the same as Gregory's own.

He tastes like butterscotch and gasoline, like salt and perfume. Mycroft's mind is sprawling, the edges peeking out, and to be honest, it drives Greg insane.

He sees more of Mycroft than is appropriate, than is professional. Mycroft looks at him like he knows something, like he knows everything and it makes the electric currents that are always dancing across his temples spread down to his skin, all over him, up his arms, down his sides, across his thighs. There's a softness to Mycroft's hard edges when he looks at Gregory, and so when he asks him to dinner, he's not at all surprised when he accepts, able to see into his mind or not.

The dinner is fantastic because Mycroft's steel cage is flexible; maybe it's not steel then, maybe it's some unknown substance that Earth has no name for. As it is, that steel cage reaches out and grabs for Lestrade, like a lifeboat in the ocean. They sit in silence for the better part of the evening, and though Mycroft gets more phone calls for his job than Greg can count, he doesn't even care. In fact he smiles, he smiles because it's so easy in a way that it shouldn't be.

When Mycroft touches him before they part ways, the clouds break open, and Mycroft is the sun.

~X~

Sherlock catches on quickly, though he doesn't voice it; he's biding his time, and Gregory's gotten more of a laugh out of than anything else. The confusion that flickers across John's thoughts are enough to keep that laughing fit going, and it's all glorious.

Greg can't remember being happy.

Not until Mycroft takes him into his bed, a place where only the privileged had been before, and he opens up; his mind is a sprawling city. It's not flashes, in fact it's more akin to Sherlock's, but there's more beauty to it. The air of Mycroft's city is breathable and light; there's a few patches of fog, but when Greg reaches for them, they dissipate. He sees things, too many, reflected in windows and cars and lampposts, and the people that mill around Mycroft's city are faceless, zombies without a place to go. But the colours, the light; it's beautiful, it's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.

He sees his face too, on a billboard, as a phone screensaver, on a book cover, and in a pamphlet.

Mycroft's city says I love you before Mycroft does.

~X~

After he gains access, after he slips through the bars of his steel cage, Lestrade stays as far away from Mycroft's mind as he can. He won't see more than he has to, because he wants this to work, he doesn't want this happiness to escape from him between slipped fingers. He doesn't want his sun to dip below the horizon - the night that would follow would be everlasting.

~X~

When Sherlock Holmes jumps off a roof, everything falls apart.

The ocean around him, the sea that is who he is, who everyone is, roars, like a monster sprang to life, consuming and destroying everything. Its waves put out John Watson's fire; it rusts Mycroft's cage, floods his city. It even changes Anderson (Anderson who is rough tree bark, who is forest, and rabid animals; it becomes a jungle, slick with constant rain), Donovan (her flashes are just that, flashes - she's as carefully guarded as Mycroft Holmes once was, and after the Fall, those flashes cease.) For the first time in his entire life, Greg wonders what his own mind looks like.

The thoughts of those close to him become loud, incredibly loud, screaming and screeching - John Watson's mind is begging, pleading, somebody help him, anybody, pull him from this volcano that's he fallen in ohGodpleasepleasehelpme. Mycroft is barren. He's barren, a wasteland, even his zombies are gone. Everything turns to ice. An ice city, buried beneath layers of debris. Ice; glass.

The glass begins to crack.

Gregory only has so much plaster to fill the wounds.

~X~

He is a ship.

He is the Titanic; steady and strong, iron and music and dancing; people, so many people, crowding him, too many, he can't handle it. They get to him, they weigh him down; Mycroft is the iceberg that strikes him in the end, that cuts open a wound so large, so volatile, that Gregory drowns. He drowns, buried under the ocean, and he takes all his passengers with him.

~X~

It ends like this:

He comes home; a flat, a dingy flat with a photo of his children (candy-canes, lollipops, gumdrops), his ex-wife (like the barrel of a shotgun, her mind was); he sets the kettle. It's simple, it's routine. He turns his mobile over his hands, smears his palm across his thumbprints, erasing him. His identity, wiped out, gone, a streak of blood on the concrete faded with two years rain.

He folds himself in a bed where he made love with the most beautiful man he's ever know; it's empty now. His hands skim across pillows and sheets - they tell him nothing. There is no story in objects, only inside of heads, cradled carefully between a thin layer of skin, a thick layer of bone, another thin one of membrane and then there, he's there. He's inside of them. He is them, he is everything they ever were, everything they ever will be.

He sits cross-legged like a child, like a schoolboy, and he slips a paper out of his pocket, places it on his nightstand. His last object; the object that never tells a story. It is addressed to Mycroft Holmes.

He takes a silver handgun - it reminds him of his wife, he thinks it with a fond chuckle - and he stares out into his ocean. It's settled, it is calm, it is everything that it never was. It reaches for him, not unlike before, but it is soft this time. It is whispers, and promises, it is feather light against his skin as it pushes him down, cascades over his head.

There is a burst of colour; a kaleidoscope of colours and sounds and tastes and touches - a touch, as hot as a star, around his wrist, around his thigh.

He is in a city.

"I'm here, Gregory."

~X~

The iceberg finds the wreckage of the Titanic buried beneath the sea, and it rebuilds it into something beautiful.


End file.
